Archive for August, 2011

The trip to Long Beach was somewhat uneventful. Lots of radio traffic. Very hazy conditions with visibility about 1-3 miles.

We saw a square rigger cut across our path.

After the square rigger passed us, we decided to have lunch. Peanut butter and Jelly. Oops, we lost the jelly. Good thing we had another jar.

To get to the entrance of Alamitos Bay, Where we have a slip reserved at the Long Beach Yacht Club, we had to cross two shipping lanes. Lots of ship traffic. No time for pictures. We arrived at the Long Beach Yacht Club in Alamitos Bay at 4pm. The clubs are closed on Mondays, so we tied up the boat, explored the island a little, had dinner and hunkered down for the night.

The next day we checked in with the yacht club and took a little tour of the facilities. This is a very nice yacht club with a pool and three restaurants. After this we decided to check out the bus system to downtown. This is where the aquarium is. We spent the rest of the day at the aquarium and went to the movies. We saw “Rise of the Planet of the Apes”.

These are a few pics from the aquarium.

We thought this was a very unusual jellyfish.

Joel liked this sculpture so I took his picture with it. What it has to do with fish, we don’t know.

Now this is a big fish. Not the one in red.

This was one of the free shows we saw about the rising ocean.

After experiencing the Monterey Bay Aquarium, the Aquarium of the Pacific was a little disappointing. It was small, and most of the few shows they had, cost extra.

When we got back to the boat we found a large sea lion parked on the end of our dock, just behind the boat.He posed well for this picture.

The next day, we took the bus to the Queen Mary, and spent the hole day walking up and down and all around the ship. We started by taking a haunted tour. This took us to several areas of the ship that isn’t on the regular tour. very entertaining.

The following pictures are of the areas on the regular tour. The haunted tour was too dark to take pictures.

These are pictures on the bow.

This is one of the guns fitted to her during her service in world war II. She was nick named the grey ghost, because she was painted all grey.

The wheel house with all that brass.

Joel and I found the radio room with volunteer radio operators. W6RO is their call sign.

They invited Joel to call someone since he has his ham license.

This is the telephone switch board. All first class passengers had a telephone in there room.

After touring the Queen Mary we went to the Russian sub, Scorpion. it’s moored right next to the Queen Mary. We have a few pictures of the sub.

As you can see, there is not much room to work or live on a sub.

We left the sub and picked up a water taxi back to Alamitos Bay. Much faster, and more interesting. We are now planning our trip to Catalina Island. We leave on Sunday, August 21. Muggs will be joining us on the 1st.

We left Channel Island Yacht Club around 11am. The beginning of the trip was foggy and drizzly. Still hunting for the sun and summer temps. The sun finally came out by 2pm. We finally came across several pods of dolphins. Unfortunately we were unable to get any good pictures of them. Maybe next time. I’m sure we will have plenty more chances to photograph the sea life. After rounding Pt. Dume we set course for Marina Del Rey. At 4pm we came across a 27 ft. sailboat with nobody in the cockpit and the sails flogging. We altered course to avoid him and passed his stern about 25 yards away. This is when we saw him pop his head out. You would think, near a busy port, someone should be in the cockpit to watch for traffic.

Joel and I arrived at Pacific Mariners Yacht Club at 6pm and, with some dock help, shoehorned the boat into a slip.

This yacht club is a very social club. They are really 3 yacht clubs in one. The morning drinkers, the afternoon drinkers, and the night drinkers. The bar makes a good profit. The morning crowd starts drinking before 8am, and the bar never closes. This is a 24 hour yacht club.

The next day Joel and I decided to walk down the Venice Beach. The pier is about a mile from the marina. Venice Beach is a very eclectic area. It is about 5 miles of store fronts meandering walkways and bike paths, many booths are set up where “artists” sell their wears. Venice Beach has the most medical marijuana stores I have ever seen.

This is a picture of just one of them. They have a “doctor” on staff that will evaluate you to see if you qualify for treatment. If you don’t have an ailment, I’m sure they will find one for you.

This is also a great place to people watch.

These are a couple of pictures of gals at a skateboard park on the beach. They were pretty good too.

This is a picture is of a carving of, what we think, is Medusa.

I noticed a carnival park a the other end of the beach, so we decided to walk to it. It was about 5 miles away. When we go to it we had to take this picture but, now we had to walk back. By the time we got back, we had no energy left to do anything else. We got back to the boat, put a DVD in the machine, and crashed for the night.

The next day we went to what they consider a mall. It was basically three strip malls with not much to them. The big draw store was a grocery store called the Pavilion. The good thing we discovered during this trip was the bus system was only 35 cents for seniors (55+).

Today Joel is making phone calls to try and get a slip at a yacht club in Long beach. That is our next stop before we head to Catalina Island.

We are still in Ventura, at the Ventura Yacht Clubs Guest dock. Joel and I had had to replace the start battery on the boat that Neal at Grand Marina Boat Yard said was practically new. While we were at it we decided to install a battery combiner as well. A battery combiner, for those land lubbers, is an electronic gadget that combines the two banks of batteries while charging and separates them only when one bank is to be used.

Yesterday we decided to take the day off and go to the fair. The Ventura County Fair just opened and we thought we needed a corn dog. The one thing we discovered about Ventura, they don’t have any cattle ranches. Sheep ranching is very big.

Doesn’t he look cute.

I mean the sheep, not Joel.

After walking all over the fair Joel and I decided to sit at the horse arena and watch some horses and wagons/buggies race an obstacle course.

These are just a few pictures we took of these beautiful horses.

This is the large buckboard wagons with, what they called Unicorns. What they really are are Clydesdale draft horses. The gear they wear come up high over the wither bone and looks like a horn. This is the only thing that we could come up with as an explanation for the name unicorn. Any horse people out there that knows the real answer let us know.

On our way out we went by this truck with a bluegrass band playing, so we stop to listen for a while. They were pretty good.

We are trying to get out of here and go up to Channel Island Yacht club. We called them to make a reservation at the guest dock. Guess what. No room.